Dive Brief:
- A jury may determine whether Texas A&M University-Texarkana discriminated against a White former student affairs employee when it forced him to resign and replaced him with a younger Black woman, a magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas held March 5.
- As part of his job, the plaintiff in Greig v. Texas A&M University-Texarkana investigated violations of the university’s code of conduct. In one case, he refused to discipline a student accused of using a racial epithet. He claimed the university ultimately removed such investigations from his duties after his refusal and later forced him to resign. He also alleged that race-based violation investigations were transferred to two Black employees in his department.
- The employee claimed his forced resignation and transfer of duties violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Both parties motioned for summary judgment. The judge denied both motions but also determined that a jury could find that the university’s proffered reasons for the plaintiff’s determination were pretext for discrimination.
Dive Insight:
The plaintiff in Greig alleged that, after the university removed some of his investigatory duties from him, it also cancelled an open position for which he had selected a job candidate. Separately, he claimed that the Texas A&M-Texarkana held a town hall for students and faculty in which a faculty member demanded that the plaintiff be replaced by a person of color. The plaintiff said he resigned shortly thereafter.
The university motioned for summary judgment on the basis that the plaintiff failed to show sufficient facts to demonstrate a prima facie claim of race discrimination. It said it had a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for terminating the plaintiff, namely performance issues.
The magistrate judge held that a reasonable trier of fact could find that the university’s proffered justification was false. However, the judge also held that the university did show sufficient evidence for a jury to find that the reassignment of race-related complaints concerned the plaintiff’s performance, rather than his race.
Some majority-group plaintiffs could soon have a lower bar to meet in order to bring Title VII claims thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is set to decide in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services during its current term.
In Ames, the court will answer the question of whether majority-group plaintiffs must show background circumstances to support their suspicion that an employer is an “unusual” employer which discriminates based on a majority group’s protected characteristic.
The background circumstances requirement is utilized in only some of the federal circuit courts of appeal, and the 5th Circuit — which has appellate jurisdiction over the district court in Greig — has not expressly addressed such requirements but has declined to impose a heightened burden on majority-group plaintiffs, the Ames plaintiff wrote in her petition for certiorari.
In any case, most of the high court’s justices appeared ready to strike down background circumstances bars during oral arguments last month. Such an outcome could make it easier for so-called “reverse discrimination” plaintiffs to bring cases under Title VII, attorneys previously told HR Dive.
